Category: Zoulapia

Short and Sweet.

Quote of the Day: Feminism

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Is feminism against equality between the genders?

As the third shitstorm in /r/anarchism raged, enkiam provided this excellent quote.

No, I mean I am a feminist. It is meaningless to say “I support equality between the genders”; “the genders” are defined, assigned, and enforced by patriarchy, in the same way class is defined, assigned, and enforced by capitalism. A feminist is a person who seeks to disrupt, destabilize, and destroy patriarchy in all forms — the privilege of men, the oppression of women, and the definition of binary gender in itself.

Quote of the Day: White Knights

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What is the difference between a White Knight and a Whiney Knight I hear you ask?

Quoth LoudmouthedBitch

To me, a “White Knight” is someone who will “defend” someone (usually a female), not for the sake of defending them, but to seem awesome. They usually expect something in return (praise, the everlasting love and affection of the (usually) female). When they do not get praise/everlasting gratitude&affection, they often quickly transform into the “Whiney Knight,” who complains about the lack of gratitude and asks why they ever try doing “nice” things in the first place.

Very accurate.

Quote of the Day: The Way Things Are

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Kevin Carson has a way with words on Authority.

Kevin Carson offers an excellent analysis on the recent post by the WSJ on Power Trips. This quote struck me:

In conversations with authoritarians about the stupidity of the pointy-haired bosses, I frequently encounter statements  that “they’ve been put in authority for a reason, and it’s been decided that blah blah woof woof.”  Note the passive voice.  The people in authority, and their policies, are just part of “the way things are,” embedded in the nature of the universe.

Nothing more to say really except to suggest that you read both articles. The WSJ one especially is yet another nail on the coffin of the “Human Nature” myth where humans require some englightened authority to lead them through the straight and narrow.

Quote of the Day: Idiots

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An unassuming Dutch traffic engineer showed that streets without signs can be safer than roads cluttered with arrows, painted lines, and lights. Are we ready to believe him?

Quoth Hans Mondermann

When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.

The whole article is really insightful on the way that people think and interact with each other, with or without someone else (i.e. an authority) doing the thinking for them. This is very similar to the other quote I posted a while back and it also reinforced my observations on obedience.

It further presses the point on how wrong it is for people to defer to (corporate-provided) experts, who much of the time, especially in social sciences like economics and traffic, have a very limited perspective and are unable to reconsider their premises.

If you hate Absolute Monarchy so much

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To all you naive utopians who think that anything other than absolute monarchy can work, these are the real results. Beware and don’t challenge the status quo.

Quoth Bowers of Paradise

What can we learn from this?  To all opponents of absolute monarchy, torture, enforced superstition, and feudalism, the message is obvious: this is what your naive, utopian views lead to in practice.  Your views sound beautiful in theory, but they forget to take into account Human Nature™, which as any wise person knows makes inevitable the eternal rule of the House of Normandy.

The post above hilariously points out the fallacy of using the Human Nature™ argument to argue against anarchism, and the flawed idea that whatever follows the collapse/disorganization of the society one lives in, is Anarchy by default.

The later thing is quite often used in fact, even by people who should know better.


Something I wanted to setup for a bit

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Testing out my post-by-mail function

Hmm, that didn’t seem to work. Lets try once more with feeling!

I’ve finally setup my wordpress to accept posts via mail. Time to see if this works. If it does, it’ll make it far easier for me to post while I’m away from home or even while I’m on the road.

Also html!

Still Alive

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I’m back from Greece and the world’s once again in alignment

Quick post to let y’all know that I’m back from my 2-week vacation in Greece. Depending on my mood I may post one or more articles and photos about my situation and/or things I did over there. Other than this, I’ve now moved to WordPress 3.0 and I’m fairly excited about the new features it has. Unfortunately the HemingwayEx theme I have does not support most of them, even though it should given it’s hacks to use custom menus on top. Fortunately I’m currently its main developer so I aim to add those features in the short future.